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The preceding chapters have tried to present, theorize, and argue for some of the contemporary critical practices known as New Formalist or New Formalism. They have also attempted to situate these practices in relation to formalist criticism of the twentieth century as it evolved from the essays of T. S. Eliot to the New Critics themselves, and in relation to some other theoretical and philosophical projects such as contemporary critical theory, Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms, and Gadamer's "philosophical hermeneutics." Except for the discussion of Keats's "Bright Star" that closes Chapter 2, the textual analyses have been extremely brief and subordinated to one or another theoretical or methodological argument. The present chapter will try to present a more concrete and circumstantial case for New Formalist criticism by offering a variety of textual analyses, and by exploring — with examples — the place of close reading in New Formalism, in critical practices that do not claim to be formalist, and indeed in a variety of non-literary disciplines. In I. A. Richards' quaint but still useful terminology, this chapter marks a transition from an emphasis on principles of literary criticism to an emphasis on practical criticism — criticism or interpretation in practice.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137362599_4

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